Start of November 2012
My first attempt at ‘blogging’, or keeping a photo-journal as I prefer to call it, was two years ago under the title ‘Travels With Harry’. Harry’s our motorhome:
Harry was followed around, very closely, by a little red car called Sally – another cinematic reference. (Harry is a Chausson ‘Flash’ 04; Flash Harry, get it?)
We spent two months of that autumn (2010) trying to decide where to live in France, looking mainly at the area west of Poitiers, known as the Marais Poitevin:
and Languedoc, where we had holidayed before, but friends had warned us to check it out out of season before deciding. In spite of the risk of cold winds, Languedoc won by virtue of the spectacular scenery:
We found a house we really wanted to buy, in a little town in the hills, called Sournia:
and we thought all we had to do was get back home to Garth View:
sell up, and come back with the money!
Ah well, it didn’t work out just like that! It took a year to sell Garth View and by January 2012 a lot had changed. Rachel had married Sean
and become Stepmother to Megan and Becky; Chris and Michelle were about to adopt a family and the house at Sournia, which would now have been too small anyway, was off the market.
Quirkily, some may think, to help sell Garth View, we bought a flat in Appleby!:
Well, it helped us declutter …. We did take time out for a month in France but we didn’t house-hunt; instead we went down the west (Atlantic) coast as far as the Pays Basque:
Throughout that trip the diary was kept as a series of ‘postcards’ as written by Harry. But shopping and excursions were done in the little red car, Sally:
so it became necessary to let her write a few of the postcards in her more excitable, Gallic style. Increasingly, the two vehicles were sparking off each other in a ‘married couple’ sort of way – a bit like us, funnily enough…. and they were coupled together a lot of the time!
The new family situation made me hesitate again about France, so when the opportunity came to film ‘A Place in the Sun, Home or Away?’, we took it, looking on camera at three houses in Cornwall
and three in Languedoc.
There was no competition! Once a way to manage inheritance issues had been explained, it was a simple case that the money we now had from the sale of Garth View would not buy us anything as nice as Garth View in Cornwall,
but something even nicer in France. What was to discuss? We offered to buy one of the properties the ‘Place in the Sun’ team had shown us:
BUT! On the way to sign the contract, before we even got to Dover, Harry broke down big time. We spent 3 weeks with Esperanto-Speaker, Trevor, waiting for the repair. The expense of that and the realisation that we might need to upgrade the motorhome meant we could no longer afford the house near Quillan. We withdrew, and eventually came back to the same area and started again. Spending two months living in Harry on a delightful, we might say, idylic campsite, beside the lake at Puivert,
we looked at about 30 houses and finally chose this one:
On the edge of a village and with a small swimming pool it seemed to be what we were looking for. A long wait ensued. French bureaucracy moves slowly at the best of times, but during August ! – nothing moves. We took possession on September 21st and the furniture ETC. (oh, yes – and the rest!) arrived a week later, as did our first visitor, Cousin Mark, by motorbike:
Five days later we had to turn our back on everything and head for the Channel. A brilliant 3 weeks included Nick’s wedding (one of Carol’s nephews):
Rachel’s 40th birthday party
and meeting the new Grandchildren.
Now here we are, all builders and boxes. And we are Harryless! On the way north we left him in Poitiers for a repair to some damage to his back end, expecting to pick him up three weeks later. Another ‘best laid scheme’ which ganged a-gley! M. Antoine, the nice motorhome-specialist-repair-man can’t get the part! The little red car was at first intimidated, then dead chuffed about bringing us all the way home on her own!
So for the next few weeks anything worth putting on the blog will be house related and unlikely to be reported by Sally, at least until the day comes when we are able to go and re-unite her with Harry. (Watch out for pink print – you’ll know she’s back!)
‘Sunejo’ is an Esperanto word meaning ….. (more or less) ‘A Place in the Sun’. This was sunrise the morning after we got back from the trip to the UK:
Stephen's space 